Top defense procurement official of Turkey has proposed new options for the acquisition of a new air defense missile system after the decision to buy Chinese-made CPMIEC’s FD-2000 missile-defense system over rival offers from Franco-Italian Eurosam SAMP/T and Raytheon Patriot based on better price and better terms of technology transfer.

In June 2013, Tukey has anounced the decision to acquire Chinese long-range anti-missile and air defense system HQ-9, export version FD-2000.

A Western industry source said that US officials have warned the Turkish bureaucrats several times about the potential difficulties in achieving interoperability if Turkey decided to go for a Chinese or a Russian architecture.

Procurement officials said one option involved going for an entirely indigenous solution to be designed and developed by military electronics specialist Aselsan, Turkey’s biggest defense company.

An Aselsan official confirmed the company is working to assess an indigenous solution for what would become Turkey’s first long-range air and anti-missile defense system. “We have [technologically] progressed remarkably over the past few years.

We think that the work here may not be beyond our engineering capabilities.” But some defense industry sources say the work may be beyond Aselsan’s capabilities and take too long to finish. “No doubt, Aselsan’s recent work is impressive. But this program may be a little bit too tough. I fear the work may take much longer than planned, and prove to be very expensive if done locally,” said one London-based Turkey specialist.

Aselsan thinks it can deliver the system, dubbed T-LORAMIDS, in about eight years.